Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts

Tuesday 28 April 2020

Whose coronavirus strategy worked best? Scientists hunt most effective policies

‘Working out the effectiveness of the unprecedented measures implemented worldwide to limit the spread of the coronavirus is now one of scientists’ most pressing questions... But untangling cause and effect is extremely challenging, in part because circumstances differ in each country and because there is uncertainty over how much people adhere to measures, cautions Rosalind Eggo, a mathematical modeller at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). “It’s really hard but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” she adds.

‘Efforts to tackle these questions will get a boost in the coming weeks from a database that brings together information on the hundreds of different interventions that have been introduced worldwide. The platform, being prepared for the World Health Organisation (WHO) by a team at the LSHTM, gathers data collected by ten groups already tracking interventions — including teams at the University of Oxford, UK, the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH Vienna), and public-health organisations and non-profit organisations such as ACAPS, which analyses humanitarian crises.’

Read here (Nature, April 28, 2020)

Tuesday 14 April 2020

Will religion lead Covid reform? Joachim Ng

‘This original belief that God and nature are dual modes of one whole reality did not get lost but was preserved in many scriptures. An integral part of this belief is compassion for animals. Folks in Wuhan may be surprised to learn that China’s major indigenous religion, Confucianism, has strong reservations about meat-eating.

‘The Works of Mencius contain these verses: “Beasts devour one another, and people hate them for doing so” (Book 1, Pt1, Ch4, v.5). “So is the superior person affected towards animals, that, having seen them alive, he cannot bear to see them die; having heard their dying cries, he cannot bear to eat their flesh” (Ch7, v.8).

‘If religions continue their spiritual distancing from one another and from the original faith in nature, they will lose their relevance to society. This is the moment of truth: Will religion lead Covid reform?’

Read here (theSun Daily, April 14, 2020)

Worst ever Covid variant? Omicron

John Campbell shares his findings on Omicron.  View here (Youtube, Nov 27, 2021)